Friday, July 17, 2026
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California Supreme Court:
Voluntary Dismissal May Cause Forfeiture of Right to Appeal
Opinion Says Plaintiffs, Who Abandoned Action to Expedite Review of Order Sustaining Demurrer, With Leave to Amend, as to Some of Five Claims, Are Foreclosed From Appellate Challenge
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
The California Supreme Court held yesterday that a pair of plaintiffs who filed a voluntary dismissal of their complaint after a trial judge sustained a demurrer, with leave to amend, as to some of their causes of action forfeited their right to appeal because the order at issue did not finally dispose of any of their claims.
Yesterday’s unanimous decision, authored by Justice Joshua P. Groban, acknowledges that “plaintiffs rely on authorities that have recognized an exception to this rule when the dismissal ‘was entered after an adverse ruling by the trial court in order to expedite an appeal of the ruling,’ ” but highlights that “[t]hose cases typically involve situations where a trial court’s orders either foreclosed or severely limited the plaintiff’s action.” Groban declared:
“We hold that when, as here, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismiss their action before the court has reached a final resolution regarding any of the claims pleaded in the complaint, the effect of the dismissal is to terminate the action entirely, thus forfeiting the right to appeal.”
He added:
“[W]e need not decide whether a reviewing court may, in the interests of preserving time and judicial resources, permit an appeal from a voluntary dismissal that is entered after the issuance of an adverse order that constitutes a final decision as to all claims pleaded in the complaint….[T]he problem with the [plaintiffs’] approach is not that they requested the wrong form of dismissal…, but rather that they voluntarily dismissed their action before the court had reached a final resolution regarding any of their claims.
The question arose after Glenn and Geneanne Maniago filed a complaint against Desert Cardiology Consultants’ Medical Group Inc. and Dr. Praveen Panguluri in July 2023. According to the plaintiffs, Glenn Maniago, a surgical technologist, was called in to assist Panguluri with a patient suffering from cardiac arrest on March 15, 2023.
Panguluri allegedly caused some of the patient’s blood to splash into Glenn Maniago’s eye by discharging a syringe containing the contaminant onto a sterile drape rather than into the provided “splash bin.” The parties later learned that the man was HIV positive.
As a result of his potential exposure, the plaintiffs claim that Glenn Maniago had to take antiviral drugs with various side effects and test regularly for HIV for six months after the incident, causing high levels of anxiety that interfered with his marriage. They asserted negligence and assault claims as well as a loss of consortium cause of action, among others.
After the defendants demurred as to all claims except loss of consortium and moved to strike several forms of requested relief, Riverside Superior Court Judge Harold W. Hopp sustained the challenge in December 2023, except as to the negligence cause of action, and gave the plaintiffs 20 days to amend their pleadings. He also struck the prayers for punitive damages, attorney fees, and prejudgment interest.
Voluntary Dismissal
Five days before the expiration of the amendment period, the Maniagos filed a voluntary dismissal of their action with prejudice under Code of Civil Procedure §581(b)(1), which provides that a case may be dismissed “upon written request of the plaintiff to the clerk…or by oral or written request to the court at any time before the actual commencement of trial.”
An accompanying declaration specified that the move was taken “solely for the purpose of expediting an appeal” of the trial court’s “adverse rulings.”
Div. One of the Fourth District Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction in January of last year, agreeing with the defendants that the clerk’s entry of the voluntary dismissal was a ministerial act that did not constitute an appealable order.
Groban declared:
“Like the Court of Appeal, we conclude that there are multiple reasons why the Maniagos’ voluntary dismissal cannot be properly characterized as an appealable judgment.”
Statutory Grounds
Groban rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that their dismissal qualifies as a “judgment” within the meaning of Code of Civil Procedure 904.1, which sets forth the statutory grounds for appeal, because it resolved all of their claims in the trial court, saying that their view reflects “a misunderstanding of the nature of a voluntary dismissal.”
Saying that the phrase “commencement of trial” in §581 “has been interpreted to include pretrial rulings” that dispose of the plaintiffs’ claims, he remarked that “[p]rior decisions…make clear that a voluntary dismissal, which is filed with and entered by the clerk, constitutes” a ministerial as opposed to a judicial act.
The jurist wrote:
“Because the Maniagos filed their dismissal before the time to amend had expired, that ruling cannot be said to have foreclosed any of those claims….And that order plainly had no effect on (let alone foreclosed) Maniago’s negligence claim or Geneanne’s loss of consortium claim, which were not impacted by the demurrer ruling in any way.”
He continued:
“The trial court’s second order struck some forms of recovery that the Maniagos had requested in their complaint, including punitive damages and attorney fees. Like the demurrer order, the trial court’s decision to preclude certain forms of recovery did not dispose of any claims in the pleadings. Instead, it merely limited the scope of the Maniagos’ potential recovery were they to ultimately prevail on any of their claims.”
Under those circumstances, the jurist opined:
“[T]he voluntary dismissal operated to terminate each of the dismissed claims (which in this case amounted to the entire action), thus forfeiting the right to challenge any orders the court issued prior to the entry of dismissal.”
One Final Judgment
Reasoning that “allowing an appeal under the circumstances presented here would violate the principles of the one final judgment rule,” Groban said:
“Any subsequent rulings the trial court might make regarding Maniago’s negligence claim or Geneanne’s loss of consortium claim—which have not yet been adjudicated—might necessitate additional rounds of appeals that could have been avoided had the Maniagos simply awaited a final judgment in the matter.”
He noted that “there were multiple ways they could have sought expedited review of the court’s interlocutory orders, saying that “they could have filed a petition for writ of mandate” or sought “a judgment on the claims that were subject to the demurrer order and then abandon the claims that were not subject to that order through a voluntary dismissal.”
Groban acknowledged that the latter option “would have required” the plaintiffs to “abandon their claims for negligence and loss of consortium” but said that the choice would still present a viable path to obtain expedited review.
He commented that the court disapproves of two decisions by this district, the 2015 opinion by Div. Four in Flowers v. Prasad and the 2012 case of Austin v. Valverde, decided by Div. Eight, to the extent they “held that a plaintiff may appeal from a voluntary dismissal that is filed after entry of an interlocutory order that does not foreclose the action.” In a footnote, he wrote:
“We also disapprove of language in [the 2001 decision by this district’s Div. Four in] Stewart v. Colonial Western Agency, Inc.,…stating that ‘appellate courts treat a voluntary dismissal with prejudice as an appealable order if it was entered after an adverse ruling by the trial court in order to expedite an appeal of the ruling.’ ”
The case is Maniago v. Desert Cardiology Consultants’ Medical Group Inc., 2026 S.O.S. 2067.
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